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Being Killed By False Guilt

Shelby Steele has an important essay on the false consciousness of the left, and Europe:

The West is stymied by this extremism because it is used to enemies that want to live. In Vietnam, America fought one whose communism was driven by an underlying nationalism, the desire to live free of the West. Whatever one may think of this, here was an enemy that truly wanted to live, that insisted on territory and sovereignty. But Osama bin Laden fights only to achieve a death that will enshrine him as a figure of awe. The gift he wants to leave his people is not freedom or even justice; it is consolation.

White guilt in the West--especially in Europe and on the American left--confuses all this by seeing Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is so terrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism and colonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Western world, a politeness. But Islamic extremists don't hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism--not their continuance--forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism.

But the international left is in its own contest with American exceptionalism. It keeps charging Israel and America with oppression hoping to mute American power. And this works in today's world because the oppression script is so familiar and because American power cringes when labeled with sins of the white Western past. Yet whenever the left does this, it makes room for extremism by lending legitimacy to its claim of oppression. And Israel can never use its military fire power without being labeled an oppressor--which brings legitimacy to the enemies she fights. Israel roars; much of Europe supports Hezbollah.

Fortunately, at least in England, the left may be finally waking up to reality:

It is amazing how a few by-election shocks and some madmen with explosive backpacks can concentrate the mind. At any rate, British citizens, black and white, can move onwards together — towards a sunlit upland of monoculturalism, or maybe zeroculturalism, whatever takes your fancy.

That multiculturalism really is officially dead and buried can be inferred both from Ruth Kelly’s comments last week and, indeed, from the title of the commission that the government had convened in the wake of the July 7 terrorist attacks last year and to which her observations were made.

In fairness, Kelly, the communities and local government secretary, merely posed the question as to whether the creed had resulted in division and alienation. “Have we ended up with some communities living in isolation from each other?” she asked. That she was speaking wholly rhetorically is evident from the title of the commission: the Commission for Integration and Cohesion. You don’t get either of those things with multiculturalism: they are mutually exclusive.

...This is how far we have come in the past year or so. When an ICM poll of Britain’s Muslims in February this year revealed that some 40% (that is, about 800,000 people) wished to see Islamic law introduced in parts of Britain, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality responded by saying that they should therefore pack their bags and clear off. Sir Trevor Phillips’s exact words were these: “If you want to have laws decided in another way, you have to live somewhere else.”

How "racist."

I should note that the author gets one part wrong, though, or at least it's very misleading:

We are not born with a gene that insists we become Muslim or Christian or Rastafarian. We are born, all of us, with a tabula rasa; we are not defined by the nationality or religion or cultural assumptions of our parents. But that was the mindset which, at that time, prevailed.

While it's true (as far as we currently understand) that there's no gene for any specific religion or nationality or culture, we are not born with a tabula rasa. There are innate human traits, one of which is to have some sort of religion and sense of nation and culture. What is a blank slate is which one it will be.

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 28, 2006 06:01 AM

Comments

What is a "by-election shock"?

Posted by Ilya at August 28, 2006 07:45 AM

When you look at how Muslims behave when they are free, "oppression" of Muslims looks like a very good thing indeed.

Posted by lmg at August 28, 2006 08:27 AM

If a member of parliament has to resign, or more frequently, dies in office, there has to be a by-election held as quickly as possible, this will be typically outside of the annual May elections.

A "by election shock" occurs, typically, when the result is wildly at odds with the results of the previous general election.

If a ruling party has a slim majority, such as John Major's conservative government in the mid-90s, then this can be catastrophic. For the current Labour government its not good. While their majority should be healthy, there are more than enough "rebels" within the Labour party to remove the 65 seat majority.

The maths are pretty grim for governments, as effectively, a seat lost potential has twice the negative effect in terms of their ability to force through legislation.

Posted by Daveon at August 28, 2006 05:42 PM


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